Part 16 (1/2)
”For shame! How can you talk to me thus?” Magelone whispered, as she arose and looked at him with flas.h.i.+ng eyes.
Hedwig's attention was roused. ”Is it possible that you two are quarrelling?” she said, approaching them.
Magelone instantly recovered her composure. ”No, indeed; we are the best of friends,” she said, smiling, offering her hand to Otto, who, however, did not kiss it as usual, but, after a slight pressure, relinquished it and left the room. Magelone vowed inwardly that he should not escape punishment.
But she had no opportunity for revenge. At meal-times the Freiherr, elated by Johann Leopold's improved condition, was more talkative than usual, and Otto took a lively part in the general conversation.
Immediately after breakfast he joined Karl and Eduard for a last ride in the forest, and after dinner he never left Johanna's side.
She seemed to him more sympathetic than ever to-day. ”This is genuine truth, simplicity, kindness of heart,” he said to himself, as he gazed into her sparkling eyes. What power of expressing love lay in those eyes! Perhaps if he had chosen they might have spoken love to him.
Perhaps if he took some pains they might still do so. If he were obliged to depart on the morrow he could return, and in the mean time memory should plead for him.
The longer he talked with Johanna, the warmer grew his tone, and even his jesting words took a graver significance. Gradually the words themselves grew grave.
He had been telling her of his garrison life, of his intercourse with his comrades, and of the society to be found in the houses of the married officers. ”Pleasant and social as it all looks, and really is,”
he continued, ”I find it very hard to leave Donninghausen,--this time especially: why, you surely know?”
”I can easily imagine,” she replied, with a glance towards Magelone.
Did she not understand, or would she not understand? ”I do not know whether you are right,” said Otto. ”It is a new experience for me; I am not yet used to it. Will you help me?”
”I do not understand you,” she made answer, blus.h.i.+ng beneath his gaze.
”What I desire is presumptuous!” he continued. ”How can you help me?
What I have wasted, I have wasted----I must wait for new and better days.”
”What have you wasted?” Johanna asked.
”Opportunities to gain excellence, happiness,--and you!” he replied.
”From the first moment of our acquaintance I knew what you could be to me, but, instead of testifying this to you, I have squandered my days, from folly, from habit----” Here he glanced towards Magelone.
Johanna was pained. ”Why will you deny----” she began.
Otto interrupted her:
”I deny nothing. I am only trying to explain to you--and, as for that, to myself also--what is going on within me. You have often heard the vanity of men bewailed, but not nearly enough, believe me. Against our better selves, against the demands of our hearts, it gives us over hopelessly into the power of every coquette who knows how to flatter this same vanity. Coquetry itself is a flattery that we are powerless to withstand. Yet how often, while we lie spell-bound, does our soul thirst, and thirsting perish, unless true love comes to succor it!”
Johanna's heart beat tumultuously, but she tried to appear at her ease, and said with a smile, and without looking up from her work,--
”Poor true love! How is it to manage if it does not know how to coquette?”
”No need of that!” Otto rejoined, pa.s.sionately. ”It only needs to show itself simply and seriously for what it is, to bring to shame all the spells of sorcery. Believe me, Johanna, if I could ever find it,--and a single look, a single tone, would reveal it to me,--I should be liberated forever.”
He had taken hold of the end of her embroidery, thus obliging her to drop her hands in her lap, but she did not venture to speak or to look up at him.
”Johanna!” he began again, after a pause, in a suppressed tone.
Just then the Freiherr called out, ”Come, Otto; I want to take a hand on this last evening with the Wildenhayns and you.”